


Porcelain

by scrapbullet



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/pseuds/scrapbullet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a doll at the foot of his bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porcelain

There is a doll at the foot of his bed.

It’s not always there. Sometimes it sits upon the shelf, sometimes upon the stair, but it is an occurrence often enough to give Nicholas pause. It disturbs him, disturbs him greatly when eyes of vivid green stare straight into his very soul and he feels so very naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. Like every thought and secret in his wretched skull is paraded before him, on show, and ridiculously easy to decipher.

It’s a handsome thing, regardless, with strong limbs of porcelain and hair of lustrous black.

Its appearance is its only positive.

He swears to God the thing is possessed.

It was a gift, albeit a strange one. His mother, now deceased, had been decidedly addled in the head, though captivating in her loveliness. Her gifts always brought a smile to his face as a child and she continued to bestow them, at least until the day she gave him the doll.

The doll.

Henry.

“That is his name,” she had said, and her eyes had been glassy, unfocused. “That is his name, and that is what you shall call him.”

Nicholas buries it at the bottom of the garden and sleeps like a King, deep and restful.

When he wakes up the next morning it is perched haphazardly on his chest, caked in soil. Its eyes seem to glitter with some kind of demonic mischief and his stomach twists with something akin to horror, unable to tear his eyes away from such a sight.

He washes it clean with a damp cloth with hands that tremble.

It follows him, Henry. It follows him from room to room. He will look up from Machiavelli to see it sitting upon the hearth. He will bask in the summer sun and it will watch, watch with glass eyes of black and green.

At night, it lies upon his arm and smiles.

It is enamoured with him, and he is fearful. He does not sleep, lest cold porcelain touch his face. He does not sleep.

He does not sleep.

There is a doll at the foot of his bed.

And his name is Henry.


End file.
